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Butterfield: Bubbles, belief and evidence

By Anne Butterfield

Posted:
09/16/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

Around September 11, it's particularly painful to recall that a powerful American faction has been hostage to a habit of subjecting evidence to the rosy lens of values, emotions and ideologies. Increasing reports show that the 9/11 attacks were enabled by an ideological fervor that prevented the Bush Administration from taking seriously enough intelligence warnings that in hindsight were right on the mark. Their understanding of threat was out of date and ideologically hampered so they could not grapple with the warnings being given. Then the nation was led into reelecting the Bush team on the barrage of garbage campaign that they had "kept us safe."

So it's painful, indeed hair-raising, to contemplate the next dire threat, now in progress, being handled by the gang that allowed ideology to trump facts prior to 9/11. How about if they "protect" us on climate change the way they did on 9/11?

On a few things we know where the Romney campaign stands. They're not about fact-checkers. And after mocking climate change, Romney added on a talk show that he is "not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet." All rightie then.

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However, the polls are working against all this denial. According to the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, 55 percent of voters say they will consider candidates' positions on climate in this election. Wanting the federal government to prioritize climate change are 84 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Independents and 52 percent of Republicans. In spite of organized harassment of climate scientists including death threats and hate mail it seems the most dismissive denialist camp has begun to shrink, and the public view shows a widening embrace of climate science reality.

A sense from the science community is that in the states it's "more about belief than about evidence." Sadly there's research to affirm that as true among the American right. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (previous legal counsel for three presidents) believed that George W. Bush would be a great president but "failed terribly in part because his White House is like our Colorado Experiment." In 2007 he conducted a study about "echo chambers" with Boulderites and people from Colorado Springs talking about hot topics. Speaking individually they revealed open mindedness and diversity; after deliberating in aligned groups they grew more hardened, showing that talk among like-minded people can create extremism. Sunstein also observed this in 1,400 political blogs in which 91 percent used links to like-minded sites. Talk about quoting your friends and reinforcing your own views.

It goes far deeper than the follies of self referential thinking, though, according to author Chris Mooney who will give talks in Boulder this week on his book "The Republican Brain." He argues that motivated reasoning, which compels people to invent arguments to satisfy deep needs for attachment to groups and ideologies, exists among both liberals and conservatives. However liberals are more likely to back off of positions when browbeaten about the facts while conservatives manifest "blow back" in which belief gets ferociously hardened by confrontation. For this group, studies show, facts do not help, and the worst of this is exuded by the most educated conservatives.

The degree of disconnect between our climate crisis and Republican denial has been causing outspoken dissension in GOP ranks. Jeremiah Goulkha wrote in "Why I left the GOP" that he grew up conservative and intended to run for office but through travel saw that the GOP worldview was "based on a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality," adding studies on the inferior level of news awareness of Fox viewers. Add Mike Stafford, a former Republican Party official, who publicly announced his departure from his party and caustically chides the right wing for its ecocidal intent to burn every last hydrocarbon.

Mooney concludes his book with a stalwart defense of conservatives for their gifts of leadership, loyalty and perseverance. And liberals, with their openness to knowledge wherever it may lead, are reliable where accuracy matters and happily see new pathways for functioning. But liberals don't defend their views well and they won't base them in values which is the language conservatives speak. One group talking values, the other talking facts, and we have here a fine Tower of Babel, while Rome burns. What we have is still a partnership to be honed and strengthened, so long as the two factions can ease off the polarizing media and talk.

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